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@ Riot: A serious look at change process (Warning, kinda long)

There will be a tl;dr at the end, I just urge everyone to read and hopefully for a red to see this.

Hello everyone, I'm EvilTrout, I have been playing since about the release of Trundle/Cass (I forget the exact date but anyway) I've only recently started actually posting on the forums, but I've been creeping and lurking them since the beginning, just to stay up-to-date with the qualms, changes, and ideas that both the community and Riot talk about on a day-to-day basis.

In this text I'll be making references to many actual red posts I've seen, but unfortunately I haven't really saved them or anything, so I'm asking you just to take my word when I bring up certain examples, however there is no need to worry because this is not a QQ thread.

The main idea of this thread is to question (as a community, our biggest duty and and also right, is to question) the process and mentality that Riot puts through not only their champions, but to items and the like. To question the buff/nerfs, or lack thereof, to certain champions. To question why certain champions are simply better at others, and why the term "tier" even exists. The 'why' of the 'why'.

A small introduction

About a few months ago, a fellow summoner had raised one of those typical (but nonetheless legitimate) "Why is the game so unbalanced" threads. He wasn't complaining or being rude, but simply questioning certain things and backed up his arguments with statistics and etc. A well thought-out thread.

Shortly after, a red had responded by saying that their goal is NOT to perfectly balance the game, but rather, to make it perfectly unbalanced.
He gave a link to a video describing this idea of perfect imbalance, and to me, it made perfect sense. (I sure wish I had the link to this video..)
A perfectly balanced game rarely exists, chess comes to mind. Anyway I'm not going to talk about the video but if you manage to find it, it brings up some rather interesting points. After watching this video I simply kinda said: "Oh Riot is right, we should stop questioning the game's balance, but rather appreciate its perfect unbalance."

Keep what I just said in mind, I'll come back to that point later on.

Now, having said the above, I'd like to bring back up a concern made by a fellow summoner the other day. This summoner was worried about the situation of Syndra. Now as most of you may know, Syndra is not in a great position, her win rates are among the lowest (the lowest if I am not mistaken) and the community generally just sees her as being UP or trash/troll pick. Now personally I adore playing Syndra, her lore, her playstyle, her ult, her voice-over... It's just all pretty cool to me. She strikes me as being one of those high skillcap AP mids a la Orianna, except that she truly is underpowered at the moment.

A Rioter had responded by saying that Syndra was in line to receive some improvements after the finals. These changes would mostly be bug-fixes related to her E and usability (QoL) issues, but, and this is the part I must stress the most, would not be receiving any buffs to her numbers for fear of her suddenly considered as OP like in the situation of Rengar. Now everyone had seemed satisfied with this answer.
But I, being a deeply critical thinker, am simply dissatisfied and find there to be a fundamental problem with this way of thinking. Blatantly refusing to even slightly improve some of her numbers for fear of her win rate sky rocketing.

But more on Syndra later.

Now let me give a few examples of cases where numbers could be easily improved without causing a rengar-like explosion (40%-60% win rate after a buff)

- Taric's passive. Often seen as useless, from a support's perspective since you aren't building ad and you aren't supposed to be hitting any/many minions. Although sometimes I like playing taric as a top dps bruiser (for fun) and if this passive would be boosted from 7.5% mana sap on AA to 10%, or even 12.5%, would that REALLY make him EXPLODE into OP-ness like Rengar? Really? Think about it. Think about how low his base ad is in the first place. Buffing this overlooked passive could potentially open up a fun new way to play taric.

-Karma. Need I say more? Instead of completely remaking her (which is taking an eternity by the way) Why not just give her an extra mantra charge? Or a Attack speed debuff/buff on a mantra'd spirit bond + increase the move speed modifier it already provides? Or Make mantra'd soul shield knock back enemies? Would any of these changes, or combination of changes, make her EXPLODE into top tier support, whether it be in low elo or high elo play? Really? Think about it.

- Giving Sivir the same AA range as Graves, for the love of god. What is the thought process behind giving Sivir the shortest AA range?

-Making Heimerdinger being able to pick up turret parts and move them. This would solve his nest-egg problem without having to waste hours and hours on a huge rework. Making the turret's HP scale with his own. Why do you feel afraid to make these kind of changes? Do you really think that poor little never-played heimy would suddenly burst into the scene and have a 60% win rate?

- While Orianna was controversial, and I like where she is PERFECTLY right now, why not give her passive and Q a slight ad ratio? I may be going a little too far on this one, but wouldn't it open more doors for the players to experiment and have fun?

The list could go on for pages...

And now back on Syndra, why not make her ultimate apply a brief silence? Improve the numbers on her passive so as to give an actual choice when maxing her skills? Make her orbs last ONE seconds longer? Make them grant vision? This would open up support Syndra as a possible pick.

My point is, it just seem that WAY too much time it given to the so-called "top tier" champions that fit a little metagame, while there is ENORMOUS potential for all the current "lower tier" champions that currently only fit into one role, poorly. Why not just make one champion per month instead, and focus more on truly putting a "perfect imbalance" to the game. YES, of course that some champions will always be a little better than others, and will be picked and win more games, but the sad fact of the matter is, some champions are A LOT better than others. Way WAY better than others. And some others could so easily have changes to allow them to play different roles than the same old boring stuff we see and do, day in and day out.

I'm not demanding and begging for all the suggested changes to be done. I'm simply saying that DOING SO would not require a huge effort on Riot's effort, and would not completely throw the game's balance out of whack.

tl;dr: Riot tends to avoid applying even small buffs to underplayed champions because they fear they will suddenly become UBER OP. They also enforce one-roled champions by not potentially giving them multi-role utilities.

EDIT: My goal isn't to see every champion have a 50% win rate. Again, the notion of perfect imbalance comes to mind, what I'm saying is that if we can give all the 40% and below champions a slight 5% boost, what's the harm? And IF you make a mistake and it turns out to be SUPER OP, just nerf it next patch? Was there really any harm in trying?

Taric's passive being buffed still wouldn't help him in the support role where he currently sits, even if it were changed to flat numbers per hit. I'm all for letting him be a viable jungler or a top laner and think that would be amazing. The real issue, however, is just that his passive and his heal are dead weight. His strengths are in his auras and the strength of his stun-ult-shatter combo for engagements in lane.

To address Karma's strength, she could be buffed to a viable AP carry pick without changing her kit in any major way. She already can be effective, but is a very niche pick that relies on intricate champion synergies to truly shine.

If you want to pick up Karma as a support, however, there is a very major issue that sets her back: She has absolutely no peel for her carries. Her spirit bond is a very ineffective tool for deterring oncoming enemies, and does nothing versus gap closers, which are far too prevalent. Support Karma also lacks any reason to use mantra shield past the laning phase, and mantra spirit bond is already a lackluster investment. This means that per fight you will use anywhere from 1 shield 2 heals to 2 shields 3 heals. Looking at this and comparing her to other supports, you may just be better off playing Soraka or Lulu, where both provide burst protection, Soraka provides buffs and Lulu provides amazing peels.

I do like the idea of Heimerdinger being able to 'pick up' his turrets, however.

While I agree in the case of buffing taric's passive not giving him any better support capabilities, it would definitely make him an interesting jungler or top. He has two skills (his passive and his heal) that provide benefits for autoattacking, making attack speed an interesting and feasible choice, if only the number were slightly higher.

As for his heal being lackluster, I agree. Would increasing it by 5-10 per level really make an uber op difference?

And yeah there are SO many options for Karma, I don't see why Riot sees the need to rework her completely.. If her mantra soul shield or wave had a knock back/stun whatever, she would NOT be OP whilst being 5% better at supporting.

RIOT is getting better at small patches without huge swings. Its honestly better this way. And I understand RIOT's point, why waste resources testing and applying changes to Heimer or Karma if they already have reworks coming?

But my point is WHY completely rework them (which was announced like ten million years ago) when all that is needed is a few simple changes?

And make no mistake, just because the patches are getting smaller does NOT mean there are less and less changes needing to be done. There are simply things that are NOT on Riot's radar at all, because they fear they'll make it too OP. And they don't even bother exploring other routes outside the meta.